V. I. Lenin

Capitalists and Armaments

Published:PravdaNo. 133, June 12, 1913.

      Printed from thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 41,

      pages288.2-289.1.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

TheBritish labour press is continuing its interesting and
instructive campaign of exposure revealing how the syndicates of
internationally associated capitalists are pushing the nations into war.

TakeNobel’sdynamite trust(or syndicate). Its capital comes
to the tidy sum of 30 million rubles. Last year, it had a net profit of
3.3 million rubles. Eleven per cent in net profit, not bad, eh?

Intheir annual report, the noble dealers in destructive materials
modestly explain their success in this short phrase:
“This year there was a high demand for military supplies.”

Isit surprising? The capitalist press and the political leaders
serving the capitalists have been shouting about war, and clamouring for
more armaments—that is so profitable for the industrialists manufacturing
military supplies!

Butwho are they, these industrialists?

Theyare the associated capitalists ofallnations, the
brothers of ministers, members of parliament and so on!

Amongthe shareholders of the “dynamite” trust (which is a
shareholder, if not an owner, offourdynamite plants in Germany)
we come across the following names:

Germanarmy: General von M\"uhlburg, Major Baron von Fritsch, etc.;

Britisharmy: General J. Donald, Colonel Noel Findlay, etc.;

Frencharmy: Colonel François Laffargue;

LordGlenconner, brother of Mrs. Asquith, theBritish Prime
Minister’swife, Sir North, a minister, Harold Tennant, M. P.,
Deutsche Bank, Hannover Bank,etc.

Theleaders of thenationalparties in various parliaments who
shout about the “might of the state” and about “patriotism” (videthe motion formulas of the Cadets, Progressists and
Octobrists in the Fourth
Duma!{1}) realise this patriotism by arming France against Germany,
Germany against Britain, etc. They are all such ardent patriots. They are
all so concerned, oh, so concerned about the “might of the state”—their
own, of course—against the enemy.

Andso they sit alongside these “enemies” on the boards and at the
meetings of shareholders of the dynamite and other trusts (syndicates),
raking in millions of rubles in net profits and pushing—each one his
“own” nation—into war against other nations.

{1}A reference to the nationalist and chauvinist stand taken by the
Octobrists, Progressists and Cadets during the debate in the FourthDuma in May 1913 of the estimates for the Ministry of the Interior.

For details, see present edition, Vol. 36, pp. 249–50, 251–52.

p. 289